Road trip recap

We never really pondered the sheer enormity of our trip until Saturday evening, as we were just reaching the point where I-90 intersects with I-87 south of Albany. We thought about how only two days earlier we were in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is pretty far away, but seems less far when you consider that a day before that we were in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which, if you look on a map, is pretty far away even from Halifax.

You get my point: Our vacation was a rather epic road trip.

It also was awesome.

Just for some quick background, our trip was a nine-day jaunt from Albany to St. John’s and back, with stops in Burlington, Vt.; Quebec City; Halifax and Bar Harbor, Maine; along the way.

I’ll post some pictures tomorrow. For now, some highlights:

• If we had one regret, it’s that we should have spent more time in Halifax. We were there for parts of three days, but only small parts. On Day 3, we arrived late in the evening and flew out to St. John’s early the next morning, with time only for dinner and a few hours sleep. We returned in the wee hours of the morning Day 8 and left around noon Day 9. The city, we later learned, is actually really neat, and it’s particularly popular with younger crowds, with a pretty good restaurant and bar scene. There’s plenty of historical stuff worth browsing along the port, too, especially …
• The Titanic exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the whole trip. We had planned to breeze through it on our way out of town, but instead we spent almost two hours wandering through the many artifacts preserved from the sinking. The cemetery where more than 100 of the bodies were buried also is just a few miles away. We stopped there, too.
• Before last week in St. John’s, I’d been whale watching once before, as a kid. I vaguely remember passengers pointing to a whale’s tail rising from the water way in the distance. Unfortunately, I was far too sea sick to care. This time, I was well-doped with Dramamine. That was a good thing, because the whale watching was truly amazing – definitely the highlight of the trip. Three humpback whales swam up right alongside our boat and stayed right there for a good half an hour. When they emerged from the water, we could just about reach out and pat them on the heat. The captain told us that kind of sighting hadn’t happened in years.
• We also saw puffins. I like puffins.
• Best investment you can make when taking a road trip: a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter.
• Our stop in Quebec gave us an afternoon to explore the city and an evening for what we anticipated would be a fine dinner in a charming courtyard with a bottle of French wine. Instead, we had Chinese food. A thunderstorm knocked out power for most of the restaurant district, and they all closed up shop — except for a Chinese place that did all of its cooking in a wok on a gas-fired stove. The restaurant was dark, and it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, but the food ended up being exceptionally good.
• Time-wise, St. John’s is 90 minutes ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Where the extra half hour comes from, I’m not sure.
• My car made it.
• So did we.